Ten years ago, switching from burning coal to gas was a key element of China’s policy to reduce severe air pollution.

However, while gas is seen in some countries as a “bridging” fuel to move away from coal use, rapid electrification, uncompetitiveness and supply concerns have suppressed its share in China’s energy mix.

As such, while China’s gas demand has more than doubled over the past decade, the fuel is not currently playing a decisive role in the country’s strategy to tackle climate change.

Instead, renewables are now the leading replacement for coal demand in China, with growth in solar and wind generation largely keeping emissions growth from China’s power sector flat.

While gas could play a role in decarbonising some aspects of China’s energy demand – particularly in terms of meeting power demand peaks and fuelling heavy industry – multiple factors would need to change to make it a more attractive alternative.

Small, but impactful

The share of gas in China’s primary energy demand is small and has remained relatively unchanged at around 8-9% over the past five years.

It also comprises 7% of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fuel combustion, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Gas combustion in China added 755m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) into the atmosphere in 2023 – double the total amount of CO2 emitted by the UK.

However, its emissions profile in China lags well behind that of coal, which represented 79% of China’s fuel-linked CO2 emissions and was responsible for almost 9bn tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2023, according to the same IEA data.

Gas consumption continues to grow in line with an overall uptick in total energy demand. Chinese gas demand, driven by industry use, grew by around 7-8% year-on-year in 2024, according to different estimates.

This rapid growth is, nevertheless, slightly below the 9% average annual rise in China’s gas demand over the past decade, during which consumption has more than doubled overall, as shown in the figure below.

The state-run oil and gas company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) forecast in 2025 that demand growth for the year may slow further to just over 6%.

The majority of China’s gas demand in 2023 was met by domestic gas supply, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

Most of this supply comes from conventional gas sources. But incremental Chinese domestic gas supply in recent years has come from harder-to-extract unconventional sources, including shale gas, which accounted for as much as 45% of gas production in 2024.

Despite China’s large recoverable shale-gas resources and subsidies to encourage production, geographical and technical limitations have capped production levels relative to the US, which is the world’s largest gas producer by far.

CNPC estimates Chinese gas output will grow by just 4% in 2025, compared with 6% growth in 2024. Nevertheless, output is still expected to exceed the 230bn cubic metre national target for 2025.

Liquified natural gas (LNG) is China’s second most-common source of gas, imported via giant super-cooled tankers from countries including Australia, Qatar, Malaysia and Russia.

This is followed by pipeline imports – which are seen as cheaper, but less reliable – from Russia and central Asia.

One particularly high-profile pipeline project is the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline project. However, Beijing has yet to explicitly agree to investing in or purchasing the gas delivered by the project. Disagreements around pricing and logistics have hindered progress.

Evolving role

Beijing initially aimed for gas to displace coal as part of a broader policy to tackle air pollution.

A three-year action plan from 2018-2020, dubbed the “blue-sky campaign”, helped to accelerate gas use in the industrial and residential sectors, as gas displaced consumption of “dispersed coal” (散煤)”– referring to improperly processed coal that emits more pollutants. 

Meanwhile, several cities across northern and central China were also mandated to curtail coal usage and switch to gas instead. Many of these cities were based in provinces with a strong coal mining economy or higher winter heating demand.

China’s pollution levels saw “drastic improvement” as a result, according to a report by research institute the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

(In January 2026, there were widespread media reports of households choosing not to use gas heating despite freezing temperatures, as a result of high prices following the expiry of subsidies for gas use.)

Industry remains the largest gas user in China, with “city gas” – gas delivered by pipeline to urban areas – trailing in second, as shown in the figure below. Power generation is a distant third.

Gas has never gained momentum in China’s power sector, with its share of power generation remaining at 4% while wind and solar power’s share has soared from 4% to 22% over the past decade, Yu Aiqun, a research analyst at the US-based thinktank Global Energy Monitor, tells Carbon Brief.

Yu adds that this stagnation is largely due to insufficient and unreliable gas supply, which drives up prices and makes gas less competitive compared to coal and renewables. She says:

“With the rapid expansion of renewables and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, I don’t foresee a bright future for gas power.”

Average on-grid gas-fired power prices of 0.56-0.58 yuan per kilowatt hour (yuan/kWh) in China are far higher than that of around 0.3-0.4 yuan/kWh for coal power, according to some industry estimates. Recent auction prices for renewables are even cheaper than this.

Meanwhile, the share of renewables in China’s power capacity stood at 55% in 2024, compared with gas at around 4%.

Generation from wind and solar in particular has increased by more than 1,250 terawatt-hours (TWh) in China since 2015, while gas-fired generation has increased by just 140TWh, according to IEEFA.

As the share of coal has shrunk from 70% to 61% during this period, IEEFA suggests that renewables – rather than gas – are displacing coal’s share in the generation mix.

However, China’s gas capacity may still rise from approximately 150 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 to 200GW by 2030, Bloomberg reports.

A report by the National Energy Administration (NEA) on development of the sector notes that gas will continue to play a “critical role” in “peak shaving”, where gas turbines can be used for short periods to meet daily spikes in demand. As such, the NEA says gas will be an “important pillar” in China’s energy transition.

In 2024, a new policy on gas utilisation also “explicitly promoted” the use of gas peak-shaving power plants, according to industry outlet MySteel.

China’s current gas storage capacity is “insufficient”, according to CNPC, reducing its ability to meet peak-shaving demand. The country built 38 underground gas storage sites with peak-shaving capacity of 26.7bn cubic metres in 2024, but this accounts for just 6% of its annual gas demand.

Transport use

Gas is instead playing a bigger part in the displacement of diesel in the transport sector, due to the higher cost competitiveness of LNG as a fuel – particularly in the trucking sector.

CNPC expects that LNG displaced around 28-30m tonnes of diesel in the trucking sector in 2025, accounting for 15% of total diesel demand in China.

This is further aided by policy support from Beijing’s equipment trade-in programme, part of efforts to stimulate the economy.

However, gas is not necessarily a better option for heavy-duty, long-haul transportation, due to poorer fuel efficiency compared with electric vehicles (EVs).

In fact, “new-energy vehicles” (NEVs) – including hydrogen fuel-cell, pure-electric and hybrid-electric trucks – are displacing both LNG-fueled trucks and diesel heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).

In the first half of 2025, battery-electric models accounted for 22% of all HDV sales, a year-on-year increase of 9%, while market share for LNG-fueled trucks fell from 30% in 2024 to 26%.

Gas can be cheaper than oil but is not competitive with EVs and – with the emergence of zero-emission fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia – gas may eventually lose even this niche market, says Yu.

Supply security

Chinese government officials frequently note that China is “rich in coal, poor in oil and short of gas” (“富煤贫油少气”). Concerns around import dependence have underpinned China’s focus on coal as a source of energy security.

However, Beijing increasingly sees electrification as a more strategic way to decarbonise its transport sector, according to some analysts.

“Overall, electrification is a clear energy security strategy to reduce exposure to global fossil fuel markets,” says Michal Meidan, head of the China energy research programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Chinese oil and gas production grew dramatically in the last few years under a seven-year action plan from 2019-25, as Beijing ordered its state oil firms to ramp up output to ensure energy security.

Despite this, gas import dependency still hovers at around 40% of demand. This, according to assessments in government documents, exposes the country to price shocks and geopolitical risks.

The graph below shows the share of domestically produced gas (dark blue), LNG imports (mid-blue) and pipeline imports (light blue), in China’s overall gas supply between 2017 and 2024.

“Gas use is unlikely to play a significant role in decarbonising the power system, but could be more significant in industrial decarbonisation,” Meidan tells Carbon Brief.

She estimates that if LNG prices fall to $6 per million British thermal units (btu), compared to an average of $11 in 2024-25, this could encourage fuel switching in the steel, chemical manufacturing, textiles, ceramics and food processing industries.

The chart below shows the year-on-year change in gas demand between 2001-2022.

Growth in gas demand has been decelerating in some industries in recent years, such as refining. But it also remains unclear if Beijing will adopt more aggressive policies favouring gas, Meidan adds.

A roadmap developed by the Energy Research Institute (ERI), a thinktank under the National Development and Reform Commission’s Academy of Macroeconomic Research, finds that gas only begins to play an equivalent or greater role in China’s energy mix than coal by 2050 at the earliest – 10 years ahead of China’s target for achieving carbon neutrality.

Both fossil fuels play a significantly smaller role than clean-energy sources at this point.

Wang Zhongying and Kaare Sandholt, both experts at the ERI, write in Carbon Brief:

“Gas does not play a significant role in the power sector in our scenarios, as solar and wind can provide cheaper electricity while existing coal power plants – together with scaled-up expansion of energy storage and demand-side response facilities – can provide sufficient flexibility and peak-load capacity.”

Ultimately, China’s push for gas will be contingent on its own development goals. Its next five-year plan, from 2026-2030, will build a framework for China’s shift to controlling absolute carbon emissions, rather than carbon intensity.

Recent recommendations by top Chinese policymakers on priorities for the next five-year plan did not explicitly mention gas. Instead, the government endorses “raising the level of electrification in end-use energy consumption” while also “promoting peaking of coal and oil consumption”.

The Chinese government feels that gas is “nice to have…if available and cost-competitive but is not the only avenue for China’s energy transition,” says Meidan.

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The post Explainer: Why gas plays a minimal role in China’s climate strategy appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Explainer: Why gas plays a minimal role in China’s climate strategy

Colombia is seeking to use this year’s first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels to launch a permanent platform that would help a “coalition of the willing” accelerate the shift away from planet-heating coal, oil and gas beyond the UN climate process.

The flagship event, due to take place in the Colombian city of Santa Marta on April 28-29, will bring together countries that recognise the urgency of the fossil fuel transition to build the political and financial means to make it viable, Maria Fernanda Torres Penagos, director of climate change in Colombia’s Environment Ministry, told a briefing hosted by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

“Although there is growing consensus to gradually eliminate fossil fuels, there were still no specific spaces or meeting places dedicated to comprehending and addressing the pathways needed to overcome economic, fiscal and social dependence on fossil fuels, especially for producing countries,” she said.

‘Necessary complement’ to UNFCCC

Co-hosted by the Netherlands, the conference will convene governments, experts, industry leaders and Indigenous representatives to map “legal, economic and social pathways” for a just phase-out of fossil fuels. The initiative won public support at COP30 from 24 countries, including major fossil fuel producers Australia and Mexico, alongside several European, Latin American and Pacific island nations.

The event is regarded as an attempt to advance global discussions on transitioning away from fossil fuels alongside the formal UN climate negotiations. Since governments made a broad commitment to do that at the COP28 climate summit in 2023, strong opposition from petrostates has stalled progress on addressing the primary cause of global warming.

Former Irish President and climate justice advocate Mary Robinson told this week’s briefing that the conference is a “necessary complement” to the UN climate regime. “The UNFCCC has been so invaded by the fossil fuel lobby that it is incapable now of including in its outcomes that we must phase out fossil fuels,” she added. “It seems ridiculous, but it is the reality.”

The final agreement struck by governments at COP30 in November failed to mention fossil fuels, despite a coalition of more than 80 countries pushing for it to include a formal process for a global roadmap to phase out coal, oil and gas. As a compromise, the Brazilian COP presidency promised it would coordinate work to create the roadmap outside the UN regime, including by teaming up with the Colombian initiative.

Practical support for developing countries

Torres Penagos said the April summit will produce a series of reports and scientific inputs to identify practical pathways for key stages of the transition. It also aims to establish a permanent international platform to support countries that want to move ahead and “ensure continuity” through future editions of the conference, where more states could join the initial group.

The event’s organisers are expected to produce a chair’s summary that can feed back into the official UN climate talks, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative director Alex Rafalowicz told a Climate Home News webinar last week.

Robinson said that, for the first time, the conference will enable discussions over the fossil fuel transition in a wholehearted, genuine and honest way, while highlighting the importance of justice. She also hopes it will establish a broad coalition of governments, international institutions, business and philanthropies determined to see the end of the fossil fuel era.

Rachel Kyte, the UK’s climate envoy, said fossil fuel-producing countries in the developing world, like Namibia, Guyana and Nigeria, need the international community to help them imagine what the energy transition looks like for them.

“Are we good enough to be practical and supportive and not just stand on our soapbox somewhere and wag our fingers?” she asked during the briefing. “And can we have it be a healing process and not as toxic and divisive as it was in Belém?”

The post Colombia aims to launch fossil fuel transition platform at first global conference appeared first on Climate Home News.

Colombia aims to launch fossil fuel transition platform at first global conference

Professor Martin Siegert is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter and Chair of The UK Arctic and Antarctic Partnerships committee.

A 30-minute stroll across New York’s Central Park separates Trump Tower from the American Museum of Natural History. If the US president ever found himself inside the museum he could see the Cape York meteorite: a 58-tonne mass of iron taken from northwest Greenland and sold in 1897 by the explorer Robert Peary, with the help of local Inuit guides.

For centuries before Danish colonisation, the people of Greenland had used fragments of the meteorite to make tools and hunting equipment. Peary removed that resource from local control, ultimately selling the meteorite for an amount equivalent to just US$1.5 million today. It was a transaction as one-sided as anything the president may now be contemplating.

But Donald Trump is now eyeing a prize much larger than a meteorite. His advocacy of the US taking control of Greenland, possibly by force, signals a shift from deal-making to dominance. The scientific cost would be severe. A unilateral US takeover threatens to disrupt the open scientific collaboration that is helping us understand the threat of global sea-level rise.

Greenland is sovereign in everything other than defence and foreign policy, but by being part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it is included within NATO. As with any nation, access to its land and coastal waters is tightly controlled through permits that specify where work may take place and what activities are allowed.

Over many decades, Greenland has granted international scientists access to help unlock the environmental secrets preserved within its ice, rocks and seabed. US researchers have been among the main beneficiaries, drilling deep into the ice to explain the historic link between carbon dioxide and temperatures, or flying repeated NASA missions to map the land beneath the ice sheet.

The whole world owes a huge debt of thanks to both Greenland and the US, very often in collaboration with other nations, for this scientific progress conducted openly and fairly. It is essential that such work continues.

The climate science at stake

Research shows that around 80% of Greenland is covered by a colossal ice sheet which, if fully melted, would raise sea level globally by about 7 metres (the height of a two storey house). That ice is melting at an accelerating rate as the world warms, releasing vast amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic, potentially disrupting the ocean circulation that moderates the climate across the northern hemisphere.

The remaining 20% of Greenland is still roughly the size of Germany. Geological surveys have revealed a wealth of minerals, but economics dictates that these will most likely be used to power the green transition rather than prolong the fossil fuel era.

While coal deposits exist, they are currently too expensive to extract and sell, and no major oil fields have been discovered. Instead, the commercial focus is on “critical minerals”: high-value materials used in renewable technologies from wind turbines to electric car batteries. Greenland therefore holds both scientific knowledge and materials that can help guide us away from climate disaster.

At ‘Davos of mining’, Saudi Arabia shapes new narrative on minerals

Unilateral control could threaten climate science

Trump has shown little interest in climate action, however. Having already started to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement for a second time, he announced in January 2026 the country would also leave the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the global scientific body that assesses the impacts of continued fossil-fuel burning. His rhetoric to date has been about acquiring Greenland for “security” purposes, with some indications of accessing its mineral wealth, but without mention of vital climate research.

Under the 1951 Greenland defence agreement with Denmark, the US already has a remote military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland, now focused on space activities. While both countries remain in Nato, the agreement already allows the US to expand its military presence if required. Seeking to guarantee US security in Greenland outside Nato would undermine the existing pact, while a unilateral takeover would risk scientists in the rest of the world losing access to one of the most important climate research sites.

Lessons from Antarctica and Svalbard

Greenland’s sovereign status and its governance is different to some other notable polar research locations. For example, Antarctica has, for more than 60 years, been governed through an international treaty ensuring the continent remains a place of peace and science, and protecting it from mining and other environmental damage.

Svalbard, on the other hand, has Norwegian sovereignty courtesy of the 1920 Svalbard treaty but operates a largely visa-free system that allows citizens of nearly 50 countries to live and work on the archipelago, as long as they abide by Norwegian law. Interestingly, Norway claims that scientific activities are not covered by the treaty, to almost universal disagreement among other parties. Russia has a permanent station at Barentsburg, Svalbard’s second-largest settlement, from which small levels of coal are mined.

Unlike Antarctica or Svalbard, Greenland has no treaty that explicitly protects access for international scientists. Its openness to research therefore depends not on international law, but on Greenland’s continued political stability and openness – all of which may be threatened by US control.

If it is minded to take a radical approach, Greenland could develop its own treaty-style approach with selected partner states through NATO, enabling security cooperation, mineral assessment and scientific research to be carried out collaboratively under Greenlandic regulations.

The future for Greenland should lie with Greenlanders and with Denmark. The future of climate science, and the transition to a safe prosperous future worldwide, relies on continued access to the island on terms set by the people that live there. The Cape York meteorite – taken from a site just 60 miles away from the US Pituffik Space Base – is a reminder of how easily that control can be lost.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Why Greenland is indispensable to global climate science appeared first on Climate Home News.

Why Greenland is indispensable to global climate science